every one concerned!' The secretary was shocked. She said if one realised one's blessings, one would not _wish_ to grumble... I said that considered as a trial the grumbler was not in it, compared with the persistent optimist. Nothing on earth is more embittering than to live with a persistently amiable person. Imagine living with a certificated optimist bound over to be thankful through thick and thin, when the soot falls, the soup is singed, and the new dress does _not_ come home! ... Imagine the conversation, the maddening serenity of the smile! Optimists are admirable in calamity, but in the simple aggravations of daily life they are just the most depressing creatures upon earth! "Well, I'm sorry! Now I've had my growl, and (Yankee again!) feel as `good as pie,' You might as well know what a grumbling, discontented wretch I am, and if you ask me why this special fit attacked me just this special morning, well, I _know_, but I'm not going to tell. I'll answer another question instead-- "You ask me what I think about love, getting engaged, married, all the rest of it. I am only a looker on, and must always be, but it _does_ interest me all the same! I have marvelled with every one else over the nature of that indefinable something which draws two people together, and which has nothing on earth to do with suitability as understood by the people. John may be a model of excellence; amiable, rich, handsome, devoted, but on their first meeting it is settled in Louisa's mind as irrevocably as the trump of doom that he would never _do_! She knew it at a flash, the moment he entered the room; the second he touched her hand. And Tom is poor; he is plain, he looks as though on occasion he might be abominably disagreeable. Louisa looks upon his cross face, and acknowledges to herself `My Lord and King!'--It's a _feel_ that decides it, not a fact. In the great, big choice of life, reason doesn't count. Two men have asked me to marry them (You wouldn't know their names, even if you heard them, so I am betraying no confidence); I should have said `no' in any case, but I might have _wanted_ to say `yes'! I didn't! I felt that as a choice a jump into the river would be preferable, yet from a sane, sensible point of view there was no reason why I should not have fallen in love--and--especially in one case! every obvious reason why I _should_! I couldn't for my life tell you what was wrong, except--_Everything_! I should have hated his very virtues by my own fireside. His `little _ways_' would have driven me daft, but I can imagine wrapping up those self-same little ways right in the middle of my heart, as the dearest things, the sweetest, the most winsome, if they had belonged to another man!